The IIT Council today decided that subsidy on tuition fees for BTech courses should be given only to those students who pursue research and take up teaching jobs.

The council, chaired by human resource development minister Kapil Sibal, considered the report of the Anil Kakodkar committee which had suggested that operational costs for running the four-year courses should be covered by raising fees.

Students now pay Rs 50,000 as annual tuition fee. The operational cost per student comes to about Rs 2 lakh a year.

The council today decided that from 2013, students would have to pay the balance Rs 6 lakh if they take up a non-teaching job after graduation.

Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe students, who do not have to pay any fees now, and students from poor families, who are on scholarship or have been granted interest subsidy loans, will, however, be exempt.

Students who study for MTech and PhD and take up teaching after that would not have to pay the Rs 6 lakh.

Following is an excerpt from a report on Times of India regarding increase in the number of students appearing in IIT JEE from Odisha.

The number of IIT aspirants in Orissa saw a steady rise with nearly 40,000 students appearing for the joint entrance examination ( JEE) for the country’s premier institute on Sunday, officials said.

Registrar of IIT-Bhubaneswar Bata Kishore Ray said, "The number of aspirants from Orissa has gone up in the last couple of years, especially after IIT-B started operating from the city. …

… About 30,000 aspirants appeared from the state last year, he added.

… In the capital city alone, over 5,000 students appeared in 12 centres for one of the toughest competitive examinations in the country.

… Director of a city-based coaching centre Jyoti Ranjan Tripathy said good coaching facilities and number of successful students increasing every year has been motivating others to go for IIT. "In terms of coaching facilities, Bhubaneswar can be called the Kota of eastern India. Orissa has created some top rankers in IIT-JEE in the last few years and this has motivated more students."

Assuming the numbers for Odisha are correct, it is a significant development in that 8.25% of the total applicants will be from Odisha. Note that Odisha’s population is 3.47% of the total population of the country.

Ofcourse, a more important aspect is the success in the exam, but significant increase in the applications is a good starting point. Some of the reason behind this increase are:

More awareness due to IIT Bhubaneswar.

The significant increase in the availability of coaching, including many nationally known coaching institutes opening their centers in Odisha, especially in Bhubaneswar. These include Careerpoint, FIITJEE, Narayana, Resonance and Vidya Mandir.

The significant increase in the number of private +2 colleges across the state, some of which have ties with coaching classes.

Now lets hope a good number from Odisha succeed in IIT JEE. Currently Hyderabad and Kota are the places with the highest number of successful candidates. Following is an excerpt from a TOI report on that.

If JEE-2010 results are pored over, the maximum number of candidates to clear the exam was from Andhra Pradesh (AP).

The state dominated the merit list. Seven of the top ten rankers were from there, the share of Kota (which is in Rajasthan) starting only after rank 15. While in 2006, 938 candidates from AP and 1,004 from Rajasthan made it to the IITs, a year later the tables had turned, with 1,384 from AP clearing JEE and 1,344 from Rajasthan. It has been a close race since. In 2009, for example, 1,862 students from AP and 1,898 from Rajasthan cleared JEE.

There are reports from other cities and states, but many have contradictory reports. Following are data from some of these reports.

The Indian Institute of Science, a leading institution of higher learning with a strong tradition of research for over a century, is opening its portals to undergraduate students by launching a four-year Bachelor of Science (BS) Programme. The programme is designed as a balanced blend of core science and interdisciplinary topics, to serve as a launching pad for research and doctoral studies in cutting-edge areas in science and technology. The graduates will also be ready for attractive career opportunities in academia and industry.

Prof. Jalote is the Director of IIIT Delhi and is on leave from IIT Delhi. Previously he taught at IIT Kanpur and University of Maryland. Prof. Singh is a professor at Auburn University, Alabama. Both are alumni of IITs. Following are excerpts from their article in Economic Times.

… The difficulty of cracking these tests have led to the booming coaching industry — it seems the vast majority of students appearing in these exams undergo some form of coaching for them. This impact of coaching has been decried by many. In academic circles, it is a common complain that coaching is allowing even average students to crack the exams, and how exams ought to be changed so that deserving students can clear even without coaching.

It should be clearly understood that the success of coaching is not due to the nature of the exams, but due to the low acceptance ratio in these exams. With these low accept rates, it is irrelevant whether the nature of exam is such that coaching will help or not.

… Anybody who thinks that coaching can be made redundant by reforming the admission tests is living in a state of denial.

There is another aspect of coaching that deserves attention. Coaching is big business: by some accounts, coaching for IITs is bigger than IITs themselves in terms of turnover. Consequently, it is able to attract good teachers by offering high salaries. One hears about IIT/IIM grads teaching in these coaching institutes, but one cannot come across an IIT/IIM graduate as a teacher in a school — even elite schools do not have this distinction. So, in many coaching centres, the quality of education is superior to that of schools, particularly with respect to the entrance test subjects. As the business success depends on how well they help the students do in the entrance exams, their teaching, as measured with respect to success in these exams, continues to improve and they take great care to improve it.

So, we have the following situation. Coaching institutes will continue to thrive as long as the accept ratio remains small. And coaching business will ensure that its teachers and teaching processes are well-equipped to impart training to students to do better at the competitive exam.

This situation, undesirable thought it is, can, however, be converted into an opportunity to improve education. As coaching institutes focus on the entrance tests and the syllabus for them, it provides a power to these exams in that whatever they put as syllabus or as expected knowledge, the coaching institutes will ensure that students get good at that. Even for those students who do not undergo coaching, these exams are highly influential — students learn/ study for these exams with a mission and dedication that they don’t show for anything else.

IF THESE large exams were to be oriented such that preparation for them will make the foundations for the key subjects much stronger and will force the students to really understand the subjects better, the coaching industry will ensure that this knowledge is imparted to students. That is, the syllabus and expectation is potentially a strong force on what students learn in the 2-3 years they prepare for the entrance exams, through coaching or on their own.

If this learning can be strengthened, then even if the students do not get through in these exams — which the vast majority will not — the preparation for them will give them strong foundations in some key subjects. This can be leveraged by other institutions.

… So, instead of fighting coaching by making exams like JEE harder and more theoretical every year, such large exams can leverage the competition for the larger good of improving the education and preparedness of students.

If these exams are thought of as a potential tool in the armory of the country for fighting the poor education standards, rather than just for admitting students into these institutes, then they can favourably impact the lakhs of students who attend JEE, and not just of the selected few thousands who actually enter the IITs, whose skills will be upgraded anyway to top levels by the top quality education that they will be provided. By doing so, institutions like the IITs and the entrance exams they have, will be making a solid contribution to improving the workforce in the country , as they have done in creating the top-level manpower.

Update: Following are excerpts from a follow-up Telegraph report which mentions about the committee’s recommendation to have wide-spread consultations before making the changes.

But it has advised caution in implementing the reforms. The panel has suggested detailed consultations and workshops with the state governments, other top engineering institutions like the National Institutes of Technology, and private universities.

The recommendations of the panel can be fine-tuned based on the outcome of the consultations, the team led by IIT Kharagpur director Damodar Acharya has suggested. The panel is likely to meet soon and may draw up a schedule for the consultations at that meeting.

… At a meeting of the panel in Chennai on March 16 with representatives of state and central school boards, some participants suggested that rural students be given more opportunities than urban students. The participants proposed two attempts for urban students and three for rural students.

The panel and the HRD ministry will also need to convince state governments that the move to end state-specific engineering tests is not against their interests.

… The panel, appointed by human resource development minister Kapil Sibal, has recommended replacing the four-decade-old IIT-Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) and myriad other engineering entrance examinations with a common test modelled on the US-based scholastic aptitude test (SAT).

The panel has suggested that the IITs accord a 70 per cent weightage to board examination scores in picking students, ..

Scores in the common aptitude test that will replace the IIT-JEE will contribute the remaining 30 per cent weightage in determining which candidates are selected, the panel has recommended.

Unlike the current engineering entrance examinations including the IIT-JEE, the common aptitude test will not have questions on physics, chemistry and math, but will test students’ powers of logical reasoning and communication skills.

If the recommendations are accepted, the IITs will for the first time admit students based more on their board examination marks than on their performance in a special entrance test.

…The minister had announced in February that he was setting up a panel under IIT Kharagpur director Damodar Acharya to study proposed reforms to the IIT-JEE. The panel was appointed in March, with the directors of the IITs in Mumbai, Roorkee and Chennai as the other members.

… The panel has recommended that the government develop a Comprehensive Weighted Performance Index (CWPI) to calculate a student’s overall score based cumulatively on his performance in the board examinations and in the common aptitude test. The report appears principally based on discussions at a meeting held with other government representatives, including Central Board of Secondary Education chairman Vineet Joshi and select state representatives in Chennai on March 16.

The HRD ministry is already working towards a plan to introduce a common high school curriculum in the sciences and math, cutting across the 35 boards — central and state — that govern Indian school education.

The common curriculum would make easier a comparison between the board examination scores of students from schools affiliated to different central and state government boards, Joshi had told the meeting.

The CWPI proposed by the panel is aimed at normalising any differences that remain between difficulty levels of school-leaving examinations under different boards.

There is a big danger that the above approach will make the XIIth exams a high stakes affair and bring it under the microscope with every aspect of it being scrutinized and judged by everyone. Most coaching classes may reinvent themselves and start coaching how to score more marks in the XIIth exam and the proposed SAT type exam. This approach may bring in bias favoring students from families with educated parents. English being a compulsory subject in XIIth, this may put students in rural areas and other areas where English is less used at a disadvantage.

So one has to wait and see how this will pan out.

My guess is if the above idea is adopted, it will go through some changes such as specific types of colleges may be allowed to give different weight to Class XII marks in different subjects. Some may introduce interviews or other tests.

One change that should be made is that when possible specialty branches should not be assigned to most students (say 70-80% in any college/institute) immediately after they join a college/institute after the XIIth. That should be determined after a year in that college/institute based on the performance in that year. This will make the class XII exam less cutthroat and ensure that students after they get into a college/institute continue to give importance to academics.

One alternative idea may to test the proposed idea (of using class XIIth marks) on 50% of the seats for a few years before deciding whether to completely abandon the current approach or not.

In http://www.orissalinks.com/archives/4059 we mentioned about some of the national tutorials that have now set shop in Bhubaneswar. A close friend and elder of mine (Sandip Dasverma) whom I respect a lot was surprised (and even dismayed) that I gave space to them here, and was wondering how come I am promoting institutes that to him are so harmful to our society.

I have mixed thoughts and feelings about the whole thing, so I decided I will write my thoughts and feelings, which at this point may not be fully coherent.

1. In Orissalinks we are writing about *all* kinds of educational and HRD infrastructure and opportunities in Odisha. When we write about ITI or Diploma or vocational schools we are not necessarily promoting them; nor it is our intention that every body should do ITI or a diploma. (On the other hand we do not think there is anything wrong in going to an ITI or doing a Diploma.) We cover them so that these pages serve as a dynamic directory of opportunities and infrastructure of various kinds. In that sense IIT tutorials are educational and HRD infrastructure elements and we cover them. Our coverage does not necessarily mean we promote them. In case of ITI and Diploma institutions, having them listed here helps industries who may be considering to move to Odisha.

2. To us IIT tutorials are HRD infrastructure elements that for whatever reason are an important component of a city/town/metro/population-hub. Students are looking for them, the parents are looking for them, the top ones at other locations have been successful in sending large numbers to the IITs, and parents in Odisha due to the lack of such institutes have sent their kids out of state. Moreover, Odisha has been sending comparatively very few students to IITs, thus not taking advantage of the opportunity provided by the well-funded and reputed IITs. So in that sense having top national coaching classes in Odisha is good. The kids who want to go there need not now go to or be sent to (by their parents) locations out of state and hopefully there will be more number of people getting to IITs from Odisha because of the presence of these nationally reputed tutorials in Odisha.

Hopefully we have clarified why we covered IIT tutorials here; We covered them because as the situation in India is now, they are an important educational infrastructure of a place/town/city/metro.

Thats that, but what do we think about these tutorials and their alleged harmful impact on the education system and society. To us the issue is not so simple nor black and white. To initiate a debate we will put some pointers and arguments.

Coaching classes are not so common for college admission in the USA because of two main reasons: Decent students can fairly easily get into decent universities in most states; and admission is not based on a single exam and the process is not very clear and on purpose not well explained to the public.

At this point the fuzzy processes adopted for admissions in US institutions will not work in India as there will be a lot of chance for corruption. One of the aura behind the IIT entrance exams and its admission process is the lack of corruption in the process of IIT admission. Many a professors and IIT directors’ kids have not been able to get into IITs. That is not the case in most US universities (even the most elite and most competitive ones) where kids of alumni, faculty and big donors may have an inside track to admission.

Recently a committee chaired by Prof Damodar Acharya has been formed to revamp the IIT admission process. Among other things they are considering to take into account the marks obtained in the 12th grade. I am not sure if that will eliminate the coaching classes. The coaching classes will just adopt and start teaching how to also ace the 12th exam.

However it is the case that mastering (how to answer) the kind of questions asked in the IIT entrance exam requires coaching beyond what is taught in the regular school curriculum. If the question pattern was changed to closely follow the regular school curriculum then coaching classes will possibly be less effective and thus their attraction could possibly decrease. But the questions may then be too simple making it difficult to pick 10,000 out of 5 lakhs. Also, there is a reason behind the kind of hard questions that are asked in the IIT entrance exams. Students with aptitude to answer such questions are good at problem solving and thus the kind of students the IITs are looking for. But IITs have not been able to figure out how to separate these students from students who have trained (and been coached) to be successful in the IIT entrance exams.

It is common in India to believe in the notion of "inherent ability" which is behind the elusive goal of finding students who have the inherent ability versus students who apparently do not have that ability but train hard (in the coaching classes) and get through the entrance exams.

But this view is being challenged. See the book review at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/books/review/Paul-t.html?ref=books. Following is a quote: "David Shenk with “The Genius in All of Us,” which argues that we have before us not a “talent scarcity” but a “latent talent abundance.” Our problem “isn’t our inadequate genetic assets,” but “our inability, so far, to tap into what we already have.” The truth is “that few of us know our true limits, that the vast majority of us have not even come close to tapping what scientists call our ‘un­actualized potential.’ ” At first it would seem that Shenk, the author of thoughtful books on information overload, memory loss and chess, has veered into guru territory. But he has assembled a large body of research to back up his claims. … Shenk doesn’t neglect the take-home point we’re all waiting for, even titling a chapter “How to Be a Genius (or Merely Great).” The answer has less in common with the bromides of motivational speakers than with the old saw about how to get to Carnegie Hall: practice, practice, practice. Whatever you wish to do well, Shenk writes, you must do over and over again, in a manner involving, as Ericsson put it, “repeated attempts to reach beyond one’s current level,” which results in “frequent failures.” This is known as “deliberate practice,” and over time it can actually produce changes in the brain, making new heights of achievement possible.

In light of the above, is it really right to look down on students who worked hard for whatever number of years in a coaching class and trained themselves so as to succeed in the IIT entrance exam? Can we really fault the coaching classes who provide the students the opportunity to train, train and train? Who are we to tell that train, train, train following a goal or someone’s life’s ambition is bad? Do we do that with respect to an athlete or an aspiring musician? No, we are impressed by their dedication.

Few years back IITs changed their requirement for admission and now one can enter an IIT only the year he/she passes the 12th or the next year. This was aimed at stopping people from spending multiple years in coaching schools in preparation for IIT. I guess it addresses that problem but raises other questions such as: Why is it wrong to work hard and long and prepare? Why can not some one decide to pursue an engineering degree at whatever age they become interested in? The later is a problem in most programs in India and is understandable because of the resource crunch. Coming back to the former: Why is it wrong to work hard and long and prepare? Does the society penalise an athlete or a music student who decides to fully focus on their goal of being a world class athlete or a musician? In case of the IITs, the problem is that most students who work hard and long to get in, do not often work hard once they get into the IITs. But then the IITs should design their course work accordingly? Also, they should assign majors for most students (say 80%) after the first year. That way students after they get in will have to work hard to get the major of their choice.

Who are bad? The students going to coaching classes? Their parents? The owner of the coaching class? The faculty at the coaching classes? The System? If it is the system then as we mentioned we can not fault the nature of the admission process as a non-transperent one (used in the US universities) will not work in today’s India where corruption is endemic and because of that even national tests are conducted for clerical jobs in the Railways and Banks. So the only approach is to have enough good institutions/colleges/universities so that the situation is not as competitive as it is now. But even then there will be coveted institutions and admissions to them will be extremely competitive and their will be coaching classes for them. Just look at France, where 5% of its high school graduates spend 2-3 years in cram schools so that they can get into the Grandes Ecoles.

The increase in the number of IITs, NITs, central universities, the creation of new IIITs, IISERs/NISER and the plan for 14 innovation universities will increase the number of good institutions in India and that would be helpful. They will also help in the more serious issue that plagued India where most good students out of high school went for engineering and medicine.

However, India needs to figure out how to improve the standards at its state universities and colleges which have degraded badly over the years. Just creating new creamy layers on the top and letting the bottom rot will worsen the situation.

In my school days, middle class parents would find a tuition master or send their kids for tution if the kids were not doing well in school. So being "tutored" had a negative connotation similar to the connotation of "remedial classes" in US schools. Of course in US now parents and kids are being sensitized to not look down on students with reading and learning disabilities. But things started changing in India and students doing well also started getting tutored to do even better, and at times this was encouraged by the teachers themselves, some with motivation to augment their income (their pay was always pathetic). Some of these teachers neglected in their teaching in their regular classes giving bad names to the "tutors". These two underlined aspects have contributed to the negative connotation behind coaching in the mind of many.

Personally, I have never had a tuition master in my life. I did take postal coaching (Agrawal Classes) in my 12th class (ISc 2nd year) to prepare for IIT and got in that year. The postal coaching worked as follows: I would get booklets with some theory and solved examples and some questions. I would solve the questions myself and send it for evaluation. Some one (a faculty) at the coaching center would evaluate my solutions and give me a grade. Thats all. This was better than the alternative of reading the IIT entrance guide books and doing the exercises there as in case of the later, one was not sure if the solution was correct or not. Also, in case of the postal coaching, the solutions had to be sent in within certain time, thus creating a discipline on the preparation. I have not met a single person in my life who got through the IIT entrance exam without preparing specifically for IIT outside of the class syllabus and that meant at least going through the IIT entrance guide books.

So I have no direct idea about how the current classroom coaching classes operate. I only know from second and third hand descriptions.

Having said all this, what would be my advice to students in their 11th and 12th grade?

First, one need not focus on IITs, engineering or medicine. India now provides successful careers in many many fields. One can go for science and math in the top institutes such as IIISERs, NISER, ISI, etc. One can go for law in one of the National Law Schools. One can go for Economics and other social science subjects in various good colleges. One can go for accountancy and other commerce subjects. One can be successful in any of those. Also, down the road the IISERs, NISER, National Law schools and the Innovation Universities will have similar name recognition as the IITs.

However, if one aims to get into the IITs, until further changes happen one still need to prepare beyond their Class 12 syllabus. Here I would recommend the aspiring students to get into the best coaching class (in terms of their past performance) that is available. In that regard it is good that Bhubaneswar now has some of the nationally known top ones in FITJEE, Vidya Mandir and Resonance. However, in case the teachers in those coaching classes do not emphasize the following, I would have one advice to the students: There is no substitute to the ability and understanding one develops when one is pondering on a question (on his/her own) for hours or sometimes days and is eventually able to figure out how to solve it. Memorizing a trick told by the teacher to solve that question is an extremely poor substitute and does not develop the critical thinking ability that the IITs expect their students to have. On the positive side, the periodic exams conducted by the coaching classes have some advantages. Doing well in them and getting encouragement from the teachers who are able to compare a current coaching class student with successful students from yesteryears gives the students the much needed confidence. (In general I have noticed that less students from Odisha get into IITs because of the confidence problem during their 11-12th. But where ever the good ones go, they do well and become very successful in their careers.) Also, the coaching classes provide a routine and a discipline in the preparation. This is hard for a 16-17yr old to do on his/her own.

In this regard one may note that bad coaching classes or not using the coaching classes in the right way could be very harmful. As an anecdotal example, a nephew of mine was telling me that he was not confident about his IIT exam as he did not have a tuition master in subject X, though he had tuition in Y and Z. After the IIT entrance exam he said he did well in X but not in Y, Z. I explained him and he agreed that in X, he studied himself and developed the understanding while in Y and Z, he was told various problem solving tricks; but that did not develop a deeper understanding in his mind and he could not apply them to the questions he encountered in the IIT entrance exam.

I had heard that many of the Kota coaching institutes hire IIT graduates to teach, but did not know how much they paid. The following excerpt from an Indian Express report mentions that even high schools in Delhi hire IIT graduates to coach their students.

Not only did 30 of its students make it to the IITs, Modern Vidya Niketan, Faridabad, has also produced the all-India IIT-JEE topper, Nitin Jain. Nearly 430 students appeared for the examination and 141 were able to make it to the merit list. In 2008 too, the school had an impressive number of students cracking the IIT-JEE, but this year’s results surpassed all expectations, managing director Varun Sharma said. “For the last 15 years, we have been sending students to the IITs. At least 15 have made it every year,” he said. The school employs around 25 former IITians and pays them a package of up to Rs 15 lakh per annum each, according to Sharma.

A preliminary estimate puts the number of successful candidates from the State at about 200 – including those who secured All India Ranks (AIR) and those who figured in the extended merit list announced on Monday.

While 150 students are believed to have cleared the test from Bhubaneswar alone, 11 students of Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, Mundali, in Cuttack notched up good ranks.

Initial reports said approximately 10 students from Berhampur and another 20 from Rourkela made it to the extended merit list.

This IIT success rate is probably the best ever in the State with one student, …

JNV, Mundali, where about 39 students were given special coaching for IIT, saw its student Abhisek Rai getting AIR 1,948 (placed 258th in OBC category list).

Orissatv.com reports in http://orissatv.com/NewsDetail.asp?newsId=NS3601 that 300 Orissa students cracked the IIT entrance. If that means they qualify for the IIT then it is a great improvement over previous years. If the 300 includes the exttended merit list then one needs the data regarding how many are in the EML and how many qualified for the IITs. If even half of the 300 qualified for IIT then also it is an improvement over the previous years. The article goes on to say:

The state students performed well only after the establishment of an IIT in Bhubaneswar recently.

… first paper of IIT JEE 2008 consisted of 69 objective question with 246 marks. Second paper was also of same marks. So the full marks of IIT-JEE 2008 examination was 492. All questions were of objective type with negative marking. The duration of each paper was three hour.

The eligibility criteria has been made to discourage multi-year preparation for IIT JEE. To be eligible for IIT JEE 2009 students must NOT have passed their qualifying exam before Oct 1, 2007 and must not have taken admission to an IIT/IT-BHU/ISMU in the past by paying full fees. They must also have secured at least 60% in their qualifying exam. See details at the IIT JEE 2009 sites such as at IIT Guwahati.